Added by ESS 09/10/1025 Schools should ensure that ethnicity and disability information is recorded for workforce members within 100 calendar days of them joining the school 

During our suppliers meeting with the DfE on 15/07/2025, the DfE made it clear that schools should be recording both ethnicity and disability information for their workforce members within 100 days (3 months) of those workforce members having joined the school.

The ethnicity aspect of this requirement is unlikely to need much implementing for most schools, but the new disability field was only introduced as blank to SIMS by the SIMS Summer Release 2025 and will need to be fully implemented as soon as possible and before the School Workforce Census 2025 is uploaded to the DfE via COLLECT.

Ethnicity

Acceptable: Any of the Ethnicity lookups, including ‘Did not wish to be recorded’, except for ‘Not obtained’.

Unacceptable: Blank or ‘Not obtained’.

Disability

Acceptable: Any of the Disability lookups, including ‘Refused’, except for ‘Information not yet obtained’.

Unacceptable: Blank or ‘information not yet obtained’.

Relevant excerpt from the DfE validation specification

The corresponding DfE file for use in School Workforce Census applications is not yet available

Please note

There are two ethnicity category codes referred to above that have slightly different descriptions in CBDS compared to SIMS. However, we don’t expect this to cause confusion.

Report definition file

You can click here for a very simple report definition file that I have created to illustrate how staff disability and staff ethnicity can be added to reports you have created for checking staff details. You should extract the RptDef file from the ZIP before attempting to import.

Selecting the correct fields

Example output from the report

Please note that both items of data have restricted access.

Added by ESS 29/07/2025 Initial version of the DfE validations and SIMS solutions Excel workbook

Version 2025.1.0 of the workbook is available from our Statutory Returns Downloads page. This initial version is based on version 2025.1.0 of the DfE validation workbook for School Workforce Census 2025 and the SIMS solutions file provided by Fileset 3101. You will find that several new DfE validations don’t yet have a SIMS solution, but those missing solutions will be put in place by Fileset 3102.

You can click here to download a copy of this initial version of of the DfE validations and SIMS solutions Excel workbook.

Added by ESS 23/07/2025 Changes to the DfE baseline validation for School Workforce Census 2024 compared to that for School Workforce Census 2025

The following is the list of changes we have found when comparing the DfE baseline version for 2024 to that for 2025

The baseline version for 2024 was included in the SIMS Summer Release 2025 and will be included in Fileset 3101.

The baseline version for 2025 will be included in Fileset 3102.

Added by ESS 11/07/2025 Disability for staff who have left the school 

As you probably know, staff who have left the school may be included in the return depending on when they left and what type of work they did while employed at the school. This means that some staff who have left the school may be included in the return, with an indication of how they see themselves in terms of disability to be included. The DfE validation will apply the same rules for the disability of staff who have left as it does for staff who are still employed at the school. 

However, the DfE also recognises that schools may not be able to obtain information regarding how staff sees themselves in terms of disability when they are no longer employed at the school and will therefore look into allowing schools to add a note on COLLECT to explain why it has not been possible for the school to collect this disability information for a member of staff that has left.

Added by ESS 07/07/2025  Staff disability related information

As you probably know, there is now legislation regarding employers reporting disability where they have 250 or more employees. With this in mind, DfE is adding validation to its collection of disability data in School Workforce Census 2025.

For this purpose, disability is defined in terms of how the members of staff see themselves in terms of disability rather than allocation of a Disability Number.

The data to be reported in SWC 2025 will be restricted to the following CBDS items, with validation checking that NOBT (Information not yet obtained)  is not reported for staff who have been employed for six months or more.

The current ‘Are day to day activities substantially affected by physical or mental impairment’ field in Personal Information panel of Focus | Person | Staff will be retained. However, it will not be reported in School Workforce Census 2025, as limitations implied by the field name are no longer relevant for the census.

Are day to day activities substantially affected by physical or mental impairment

We have provided a new ‘Disability’ field in the Personal Information panel of Focus | Person | staff, and schools will need to add an appropriate value to avoid a validation error in the census. ‘Disability’ values will not be defaulted.

Disability

Personal Information panel of Focus | Person | Staff